


Canticle

by landofspices



Series: Only Our Dark Does Lighten: canon-based episode tags [6]
Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Episode Related, F/M, Grief, Guy joining the Outlaws, Guy's eyeliner, Guy-centric, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Non-Linear Narrative, Panic Attacks, Robin and Guy POV, Sexual Abuse, Stockholm Syndrome, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-09 12:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6907918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/landofspices/pseuds/landofspices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follows on immediately from "Enemy of My Enemy" ... how will Guy integrate with the Outlaws? This fic emerges from headcanon discussions about a number of issues relating to Guy's place within the camp, but especially the question of how he would cope with the complicated and traumatic issue of grieving for Vaisey, his abuser, in such an uncomprehending environment. </p><p>Guy-centric and Guy-sympathetic, so I recommend reading only if you're into that! The fic uses our preferred edits to "Bad Blood" (different cast; revised ages as explained in notes to other stories); otherwise it's canon compliant.</p><p>[tw: background abusive Vaisey/Guy, including past rape; Ch. 1-2 are implicit, nothing at all graphic.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...from my original summary for the fic: "Chapter One is just Guy and Robin chilling (okay, not Guy: Guy has no chill) after 3.11". I think GUY HAS NO CHILL is my truest ever commentary on this show tbh.

  
_On the side of a hill in the deep forest green_  
_Tracing of sparrow on snow-crested brown._

— "Scarborough Fair / Canticle"

 

Robin of Locksley has never lacked courage. He feels the sun lave his face with warmth as the wind drops, yet it’s an autumn day: the air itself is brisk. I might have departed my life this day, he thinks. I might have met Marian somewhere in the chartless spaces of purgatory, and taken the hands of her soul in the hands of mine. The afternoon is one of those pale gold ones, a celandine afternoon — something he’d forgotten in the Holy Land. There are the things you miss, in those years away, and then there are the things that come upon you as marvellous surprises when you return: you lacked them without even knowing it. A good day to die ... it truly would have been. Only the animal blood runs in his veins still, and Robin is glad, glad that he is not dead. It gladdens him that he lives, draws breath: the air is sweet, even with its taints of dung and blood. They are a stone’s throw from the place of execution, but he is every inch alive. He has never been more so.

They say man’s life is a sparrow passing on brown-dappled wings through the light of a great hall, where men have gathered to drink and sup and make merry. In one gay and gallant swoop he makes his way, yielding to nothing. Those small wings simply take him onwards, and out he goes into the cold again.

We know not the hour of our leaving, Robin thinks. He sees what is really there, his friends’ faces smiling upon him: drawn, sweat-soaked, tender. Much grips his arm and Kate catches at his hand, tangling their fingers. Oh, they have marched as hard as any soldiers to reach him. Love sped them. And he sees Marian’s face for an instant, as he always does, strangely white as the blood left her cheeks. Those sparrow-wings, finely made, strong. He pictures a bird in the moment just before it drops from the air, an arrow splitting its little breast.

Gisborne stands apart from them, as is only right. He complains no more about his stolen horse, but hangs his head and lets his long hair fall forward as if he is afraid to look at them. Robin sees Allan glance at him, but no one asks what he thinks. No one says a word to him. Would it have been different if Archer had joined them, if there had been two strangers?

He smiles at Tuck, at John, and speaks words of praise. They come to him easily. He turns away from Guy. When Guy drew his sword on Archer, Robin thought, I’m standing so close to them; if I have to, I can probably stop him. Why is it this time, and for him, that I’ve been granted that boon? And this time, for him, Guy put the blade away, didn’t he. This time, he calmed himself, and those strained features, that lovely Gisborne face — so like his sister’s, so like his mother’s — was only the face of someone who used to kill.

Robin wanted to shout at him, to throw Marian’s body down on the dungeon floor between them in a ragged heap of all that was ever beloved. Why have you learnt to hold back: it is too late, too late, too late. But he heard Guy’s voice falter as he spoke of his mother, and did not.

*

He knows that Robin’s friends are talking to one another, and to Robin, though not of course to him. The sound of their voices rises and falls in concert, but Guy cannot follow the sense of what they’re saying: it could be another tongue, for all he knows, for all he cares. Cold waves of sickness are breaking over him and he swallows hard. He can’t bear to give into it before them all, can’t bear to double over and retch in front of the fair girl who hates him so, and is less mannerly about it than Robin. Robin does not call him evil now, though he must think it. The girl’s brother ran at him and he struck out with the sword, but it was not really murder. Not like Marian: not like that.

_Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me._

If he could only be alone, even if it were back at the castle. His legs are trembling and sweat covers his skin, streaming down his back and his legs: it is horribly wet under his clothes. Guy’s breath comes short and tight, like crying without tears, until his chest is sore with effort. It should be easy, to breathe, but it is not. For a long time now everything has been growing more and more difficult. The things he took for verities, for certainties, have become unsteady. Keep the law, unless you are stronger than the law. Always seek wealth, never friendship. Always be distrustful. The stab in the dark will come: expect it nightly.

What else is education for, Vaisey said genially, if not to instil a few precepts. He stroked Guy’s cheek and said, “Repeat. Again.”

He wishes it was easier to understand why Robin hasn’t killed him yet.

When they said it would be hanging, his eyes burned and he fought back the tears. He couldn’t weep before Robin and Archer: the oldest of them all and undone by terror, as if he was still no more than a child with a hempen loop curled close around his throat. Not this time, no. He would undo the shame of twelve-summers-old, sobbing out as they dropped it over his head, _Maman, Maman, venez ici, venez, s’il vous plaît._

His resolution held while they led him to the horse, and while they mounted him, and while they tied his hands, and while they led him with the others to the place of death. But when they brought the noose and he was to be first, and they put it over his head? Then fear took him, like another brother. This one came clad in black silk that whispered in the breeze, and caught Guy’s hand and held it tight. His eyes filled and he could no longer see the crowd. He was alone with the rope, and he remembered it: that particular loneliness, in the collar only you will ever wear.

“Gisborne,” Robin is saying. “Gisborne—”

Guy is still mazed, thick-headed. His breathing will not come right. He tries to listen and misses half of it, or more than half. Take my horse. You and Allan. Something about splitting up for a while. Three leagues out of York, at a meeting of ways. The wood hard by for shelter.

If Guy had any choice in the matter, he would never set foot in a wood again. The uncertain paths with holes waiting under drifts of leaves, ready to trip you. Animals rustling loudly in the bracken, confusing and frightening, never coming near enough to be killed and eaten. The endless mud, and cold, and rain. Since he fled Nottingham Castle, he has never been warm except for the time he went to Locksley, when Isabella exclaimed over his icy hands and built the fire into a roaring blaze for him. When she carried in a jug of wine, and combed his hair with her silver comb that is like their mother’s. When she poisoned his blood. 

He does not want to go to Sherwood, and he sees his hands shake as they gather the reins of Robin’s horse. It’s that or self-slaughter, he reminds himself. The oath —

Not that the oath Vaisey forced from him means much now that the man is dead, for death is the canceller of bonds, the great oath-breaker. _My punishment is greater than I can bear._ Those are the words of Cain. He is afraid to fall on his sword again: he recoils from the pain and the bleeding, if it does not despatch him at once.

Why does Robin persist in this inexplicable mercy?

*

Robin watches him push the hair out of his eyes. What a mess. There are rope marks on Guy’s wrists and he thinks: of course he didn't have the sense to keep still. It comes naturally to regard Gisborne as a hopeless — but at the same time, treacherous, chancy, unreliable — fool. His mind supplies an image of Guy’s face as they settled the rope around his neck, so carefully. How his mouth trembled, and Robin looked away in pity at the loss of composure. You don’t have to bear my eyes, he’d thought. I looked my fill, didn’t I? When I was ten; when I didn’t say a word for you.

He and Guy took two days on horseback, riding to York. They have never willingly done anything together before, and Robin has learnt more about Guy in that time than he wants to know. Now he watches him mount without his customary grace, and sit still for an instant before reaching down an arm to help Allan up behind him. Robin looks up at them both. He meets Allan’s eyes first with a look that says, I expect you to tell me what he does. I'll know if you're lying. He tries to look at Guy, but the blue eyes are unfocused and vague.

He won’t squander his sympathy on a man with some rope burns he could have prevented by keeping his nerve. Robin has seen real wounds in the Holy Land; he has seen peasants missing fingers, hands, by Guy’s order.

You deserve more than you got, he thinks. Marian would not have been such a coward, up there beside me. We waited for death in the Holy Land, staked in the desert, and she laughed, and said her vows to me. I thought the last minutes of my life would be the happiest any man ever had.

He watches Allan grip Guy’s upper arm as Guy turns the horse. He can see that it is not a warning, and that Allan is not steadying himself, keeping his balance. He means to offer comfort. The clasp is momentary, but it troubles Robin. Guy is, above everything else, dangerous.

He cannot be allowed to acquire an ally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guy's oath to Vaisey (not to try to commit suicide again, following a failed attempt on the journey back from the Holy Land) is covered in my story, "A Fulsum Fode", part 3 of this series.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And: back in time!

_Tell her to make me a cambric shirt:_  
_Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme._

— "Scarborough Fair / Canticle"

 

One night they lie curled between roots, in the brown sift and drift of the leaves, which have been falling for weeks now. It’s a long way to York, two days’ ride, and Robin says it’s safer to sleep in the Forest than to look for any other shelter. Who could betray us? Anyone. They tie up their horses in silence.

He’s grown used to the heat of Kate’s body; she’s a small, burning creature, pressing her narrow body against him on his pallet. They are not unchaste, but he kisses her lips and they yield softly, her breath sweetened by stolen apples. Without her, it’s cold. You’re not my idea of fun, he thinks, examining Gisborne’s pale face as they nestle down together at a politic distance. Not near enough to touch, even by accident; not far enough to offend.

All the same, he knows them to be in his domain, and he does the decent thing: he does what Robin Hood would do. He tells no stories of wights, makes no casual mention of Sherwood’s phantoms. He sees Guy startled by the innocent calls of the birds, over and over, and he stops his mouth, closes the gibes and the mocks in his throat like echoes. Could I make you run away from me again, as you fled through Locksley, half-drunk and no longer able to hide your fear of me? Yes, I could do that without a weapon: with only words. My mistake lay in ever thinking I needed something as crude as a heated blade, for you.

If I do not set you stumbling away, Gisborne — or shall I call you by another name, butcher? — if I do not set you on the way in terror, tears in your false blue eyes; if I do not send you away running, tripping on the forest floor; if I do not chase you off, or cut you down, it’s for the pity she bore you, God help her.

He tries not to think of her with her hair flung into disarray by the wind. I always liked you better, so. I don’t care for anything artful. Looking like you just slid off your horse after a gallop: that’s how I wanted you to look, your eyes bright with speed and motion. Only I confess that if you stepped from behind one of these tree trunks and said you had discovered a taste for the quiet life, said you wished to spend the rest of your days tucked up in your chamber to broider in gold: I would not say no, Marian. I would hang up your bow for you, and bring you all the golden thread in England. I would kiss you a thousand times. Nay, a thousand would not suffice me.

To banish her from the eyes of his mind: it is a bitter thing.

He tries to think of Guy and Isabella when they were children. For I must have a vein of pity in me, he tells himself, looking at Guy’s bowed head, if I can only delve for it, and find it out. Eighteen years, my father left him to think he’d killed them all. His life began in killing, did it not? His own mother. His own father. I never thought I would lie with this man on a couch of dry leaves, near the edge of the Forest, he thinks. If I could but feel pity, and not keep telling myself I ought to. The wrongs that were done him: yes, yes. And yet my heart will not soften, it hangs heavy in my breast like a lump of stone.

Robin sees their hands clinging together. French bones, long and slender. Isabella’s fluttering ribband: something he had forgotten. The heat of the flames made the air shimmer and move. Weeks later, he thought: it shouldn’t look so beautiful, a pyre. He’d never told anyone that, it was an ungodly thought.

Many things have come back to him. He’d forgotten about the way they held him back. How wildly he’d struggled, sobbing with rage. My father, my father. And no one needed to hold Guy, no one touched him. He didn’t move at all. Robin has one recollection of his face, emptied of colour. His eyes were stretched wide and leaking tears, his mouth was open.

It is fruitless to wish you’d done something otherwise, is it not. Perhaps it would have been better if he had not wailed, in his grief, at Guy in particular. No use now saying, I know you couldn't have done a thing, of course. I was just desperate. He remembers Guy’s voice, seared with shame, all the false pride bled away. _I should have braved the flames._ He thinks, I’m sorry. I’ll never say it. But I’m sorry.

He pictures Guy as a child, thin and dark, with long hair his mother kept too beautifully. He hadn’t yet grown tall; his voice was still a boy’s voice. And if that boy had found the courage to run into the fire? A world with no Guy of Gisborne in it. Is that what you’d have wanted, he thinks, looking sidelong at Guy’s pallid profile in the dusk. He’s shut his eyes, and his lashes lie unmoving on his cheeks. Robin can see the traces of dark cosmetic circling his eyes: it’s smudged, but more visible than usual when Guy has his eyes closed. It’s what the Saracen whores do, and Robin has never seen another Englishman affect it. A world with no Guy of Gisborne in it, he thinks, studying the dark-rimmed eyes, the ruffled hair, the pale cheeks which are so like Isabella’s. Well, you’d have died, Guy. Died with your mother, only twelve years old.

The thought isn’t pleasurable for him: Guy’s flesh melting from his narrow limbs, and the hair his mother loved so, crumbling into a thin grey ash. Yet that child grew into the man who put his blade through Marian’s body, and caught her in his arms as Robin ran towards them – as though he had a right to even a moment of her dying, even an instant.

*

They have no fire, because it’s safer without. Guy is cold to the bone, and cares not at all: he wishes parts of him would die off. The more, the better. If he was alone he’d go and lean against his horse; not only for warmth, but because he has always liked them, taken comfort in their presence. Vaisey was a good rider but did not care for animals, except his birds. He never went to the stables.

He won’t show weakness before Robin, though. Already there is the galling truth that Robin knows the way, and he does not. All their food is Robin’s, and although he scrupulously shares it into equal rations, Guy feels his cheeks flame when Robin gives him his share during each halt. Here you are again, no? Like the falcon to the falconer.

He has to eat it, because it would be unspeakably humiliating to faint as he did before. So Guy has only the satisfaction of picturing himself throwing it to the ground and crushing it with his heel. I don’t need your bread. I won’t take your meat. I’d rather starve myself to the bone than be your man. Anyone’s man. He feels like weeping, as he sits curled in the leaves, tearing in his docile way at the bread Robin gave him. Already so tame, he thinks. Or perhaps it is only a fever dream.

He often wonders that. If he will waken and find himself in the castle, or even at Locksley. Will the physician be there? Will the Sheriff? What if my chamber is darkened, and he stands in the gloom so I can’t see his face. Will he strike me, for dreaming that I put a blade in him. Or will he caress me and say it’s just us now, nothing’s wrong. You were sleeping, sleeping.

There are so many noises in the Forest. You’re never safe.

Guy closes his eyes, but when they are closed he sees the flames. His house and Marian’s house. He doesn’t want to sleep with Robin there, but he cannot even rest. At last he opens his eyes and looks up at where he knows the leaves are, though it’s almost black now, the last light is dying.

"Of course God let you see your father again," he says. He hears his own voice, brittle, and turns his head away so Robin can’t see his face.

Robin says, “I didn’t ask for this, any more than you did.”

He can’t answer. It is the last and worst injustice, that Robin, who has everything, should have this too. Lying in the crook of the root, Guy shivers in the night air. He’s far from used to it. His nose is running. He sits up, draws up his legs, puts his chin on his right knee. The ache of having no mother is the same as eighteen years ago: a physical pain that won’t let him be still. It’s too bitter to allay in weeping, even if Robin weren’t right there, ready to laugh at him.

Oh, why couldn’t it be her, why not. If only this time, things had come right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Embroidery using gold was a real pastime for ~classy medieval ladies~, somehow I can't see Marian ever being into that. But Robin is so accepting! he'd love her even if she didn't like adventures any more! idk, grief really sucks. :(
> 
> The explanation of Guy's triggers (e.g. Robin having control of their food supply) is in "One Art", also part of this series of canon-compliant fics. Please read warnings.


End file.
